Posted on 08/14/2014 2:41:49 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The outrage over the shooting death of Michael Brown escalated in part because of a sense that nothing had changed, that police officers were still operating in minority communities with a wantonness and brutality that belonged to another era.
But over the past two days — as the police in Ferguson have responded to very angry protests with an alarmingly heavy hand, looking and reacting as if they were not the community's own peace officers but an invading army — something remarkable has happened. The longstanding liberal concerns about police racial hostility has seemed to merge with the longstanding libertarian concerns over police militarization. It isn't just that no one is defending the cops. It's that many of the criticisms from the left and the right sound very similar.
"We need to demilitarize this situation" is how Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill's statement began this morning. The whole piece sounded awfully similar to Senator Rand Paul's op-ed, which appeared a little bit later under the headline, "We Must De-Militarize the police."
Kevin D. Williamson, the roving correspondent for the conservative journal National Review, wrote from Ferguson this morning of "ridiculously militarized suburban police ... pointing rifles at people from atop armored cars, i.e. the worst sort of mall ninjas." (This is the same Kevin D. Williamson who compared a black child to a primate 24 hours earlier.) In a similar vein, the liberal MSNBC host Chris Hayes introduced a segment on police militarization on his show last night by mentioning the surreal fact that the police — in a suburban setting, not a jungle, were wearing camouflage: "What exactly are they trying to camouflage into?"
By no means has every conservative been outraged by the police response in Ferguson. On Fox News this morning, the story was still that the protestors threw Molotov cocktails, and the police responded. But the argument against a militarized police is a longstanding libertarian concern, whose most dogged journalistic proponent has been the libertarian Radley Balko, author of The Rise of the Warrior Cop. Just as notably, the conservative perspective on law and order has been subtly changing, most obviously in the strengthening conservative enthusiasm for reforming prison sentencing, a cause embraced not only by libertarians like Mike Lee and Rand Paul but also by more conventional Republicans like Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan.
Even given this recent history, it was still striking today to see Rand Paul, in his statement, turn from more general concerns about the militarization of police to the specific topic of race: "Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them."
This is exactly the argument that liberals have been making for an awfully long time, but that conservatives have rarely joined. It seems hard to imagine, given how clearly the conversation has turned to militarization, that we won't hear more of this. Watching the reaction to Ferguson, it seems possible that the talk about police militarization might function as a convenient rhetorical backdoor, a way for both liberals and conservatives to address the siege mentality that seems to have taken hold in many police departments and the alienation that breeds in communities.
Militarization is not the deepest problem that surfaced in Ferguson: Race still is. But militarization may be the actionable one.
1st step is get rid of the unions for city & state workers.
2nd step, stop sending military equipment to the police departmenst.
This is not a racial problem. No one in their right mind trusts a “police” force who can harm, brutalize or kill with impunity, whose “impartial” investigations invariably find the “officer” followed procedures and did nothing wrong. Police, TSA, ICE, FBI all the same. The law needs to apply equally to everyone. No longer can government agents be allowed a different standard of behavior than those who pay their salary. The concepts of “limited” and “qualified” immunity need to be long gone. Break in to a house with a search warrant that was obtained falsely, break into the wrong house, kill someone. A civil suit is no longer enough. That is MURDER ONE.
I’m all for de-militarizing our local police, but also knukka-heads wrestling with the cops pretty much ask for the po-po to pop’em.
If these guys loved the combat arms so much, they should’ve stayed on active duty. I sure don’t like the way this is headed.
Could someone please define “militarization” for me, concretely? I don’t think it means what you think it means.
We have three problems:
1. Many on the left have no problem with militarized police, as long as they aren’t used against the left.
2. Many on the right have no problem with militarized police, as long as they aren’t used against the right.
3. They will be used against the left AND right.
Is that what you were told occurred?
Or do ya have a link to their completed investigation? If so, I’d like to see it.
If not, what do ya think is taking so long?
It all starts at the most local level. My township doesn’t have police because we voted to get rid of them. They were unnecessary and expensive.
By law we have to contract with the county sheriff but they don’t come out here unless they’re called.
I don't think so.
Any conservative telling ya they have no problem with the police becoming militarized is no patriot or conservative.
Oh I see. The author would have police wear sweats down around the center of their butts, Che T-shirts, flip-flops, and have their hats on backwards when confronting the masses throwing Molotov cocktails and firing at helicopters. This would certainly make the community feel much safer. The small minority in the streets that create the danger for LEOs and the community dictate the necessary protection level. If everyone out there were peaceful and non-violent, the police could wear their patrol uniforms. Would you want to go out there without protective clothing?
Yet we have many self-proclaimed conservative here doing just that.
We have TOO MANY COPS.
I notice the author managed to choke out “libertarian” and “conservative” without spitting - barely - but one of the standard-bearers on the issue of too much government has been the unmentioned and presumably unmentionable Tea Party movement. You remember, those rabid, knuckle-dragging wing-nuts who faced down the BLM SWAT team in Nevada? Couldn’t be that they had a point all along, could it?
It is in Ferguson! Whiter people don't act like savages bent on lawlessness.
True enough. It's probably more accurate to say "Many self-proclaimed conservatives (including some FReepers) have no problem with miliarized police . . ."
That's where we have to be.
And the affiant on the search warrant too.
Perhaps the Judge for not doing due diligence.
*White
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